<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=utf-8"
	pageEncoding="utf-8"%>
<%@ taglib uri="http://tiles.apache.org/tags-tiles" prefix="tiles"%>
<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/core" prefix="c"%>


<html>
<body>

<p class=prepskillsbody><em>By Joanna Severino, President of
PREPSKILLS<sup>®</sup> Inc.</em></p>

<p class=prepskillsbody>In late 2008, the College Board introduced
Score Choice much to the delight of students worldwide, many of whom
believed it had just made applying to American universities and colleges
a lot easier.</p>
<p class=prepskillsbody>Score Choice is a policy that relates to the
SAT Reasoning Test—a test that students must write to gain admission to
80% of American colleges. In the past, the College Board (the non-profit
organization that administers and runs the SAT) has stipulated that if a
student writes the SAT repeatedly, all of her scores would necessarily
be sent to colleges as part her admissions application. With the
introduction of Score Choice just over a year ago, the situation has
changed dramatically.</p>
<p class=prepskillsbody>The College Board introduced the policy of
"Score Choice" in order to provide students with the opportunity to
choose which SAT scores they report on their college admissions
applications.</p>
<p class=prepskillsbody>Prima facie, Score Choice sounds like a
great policy all around—a transformation in score reporting that
ultimately favours the student. Consider the new scenario: you can now
write, and rewrite, and rewrite, and rewrite some more...until you got
the score that you want. In fact, the only limitation to your rewrites
is the number of exam sessions each calendar year (there are only six in
Canada).</p>
<p class=prepskillsbody>In this new Score Choice world, you can, in
theory, pick your highest scores from a plethora of possible SAT
sittings. No one will ever know that you might have scored a 1600 (out
of a possible 2400) on your first try given that you later scored 2200
(you only have to report the second score).</p>
<p class=prepskillsbody>Not surprisingly, many students (and their
parents) thought the new Score Choice policy had just made getting into
American colleges a lot easier.</p>
<p class=prepskillsbody>Unfortunately, Score Choice has created a
more complicated admissions world than students first realize.</p>
<p class=prepskillsbody>There are two reasons why.</p>
<p class=prepskillsbody>The first is that Score Choice is a College
Board policy, which individual colleges and universities can choose to
opt in or out of.&nbsp; Individual universities and colleges devise
yearly policies towards Score Choice reporting, and many of them have
rejected Score Choice.</p>

<p class=prepskillsbody>For instance, when Score Choice first
appeared in late 2008, a number of Ivy League universities and top state
schools boldly declared they wouldn't accept it. The University of
Pennsylvania, Stanford, Columbia and Cornell all continued to require
that students submit every SAT score on their exam transcript. Failure
to do so disqualified a student's admission application.</p>
<p class=prepskillsbody>This meant that students who plan to apply
to multiple universities and colleges need to be careful about whether
they chose to rewrite the exam at all, let alone rewrite it repeatedly.
Multiple rewrites do not look good on an admissions application, and if
your college rejects Score Choice, then you must report all scores
(including your poor scores).</p>
<p class=prepskillsbody>The second reason Score Choice has hindered
some students' performances is that it has added to the mythical view
that by simply rewriting the SAT (i.e. without doing anything to improve
upon SAT-specific skills or test-taking strategies), a student can
increase her score. This is not the case. Studies analyzing the
behaviour of students who rewrite standardized exams indicate that
repeat exam sessions do not improve scores. In fact, among one-third of
students, scores actually decrease over repeat sessions. This is because
standardized exams are designed to make students score within a certain
bandwidth. If a student's first score on the SAT is 1600, his second
score won't be far off - especially if he does nothing to target his
test-taking skills in the interim.</p>
<p class=prepskillsbody>Learning SAT-specific test-taking skills is
the only way to improve a SAT score. The best bet, therefore, is to
learn these skills before you ever sit down to take the exam.</p>
<p class=prepskillsbody><strong>What to do?</strong></p>
<p class=prepskillsbody>Rather than worrying about whether you
should rewrite the SAT, PREPSKILLS recommends that students "Do it once,
do it right!" To succeed on the SAT, start with these steps:</p>
<ol>
	<li>Plan to enrol in an SAT-specific training course with a
	Canadian provider - i.e. a company, like PREPSKILLS, that specializes
	in sending Canadian students abroad. Canadian companies know where the
	curriculum differs between American and Canadian high schools. These
	courses generally take 8 to 12 weeks, depending on your skills levels.
	So plan ahead!</li>
	<li>Learn about the SAT-specific scoring penalty, which penalizes
	you for incorrect answers. PREPSKILLS analyzes a student's score range
	to figure out the degree to which this penalty is artificially hurting
	a student's score. If you are unaware of the scoring penalty, take some
	time looking at the College Board website (<a
		href="http://www.collegeboard.com" title="www.collegeboard.com">www.collegeboard.com</a>)
	to learn more about it.</li>

	<li>Plan to write your SAT at the end of Grade 10 or in Grade 11.
	Do not leave it until Grade 12. There is no Grade 12 content on the
	exam, and if you leave it until Grade 12, it might be too late to meet
	early admissions deadlines for your college.</li>
</ol>
<p class=prepskillsbody>For more information on preparatory training
services for the SAT visit <a href="http://www.prepskills.com"
	title="www.prepskills.com">www.prepskills.com</a>. Courses are
delivered in class within the Greater Toronto Area and online via
distance learning options for other Canadian locations.</p>
</body>
</html>
